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he considers as embracing all that can fall within the compass of human understanding." The first part is the knowledge of things, their properties and operations, as they are in themselves, whether material or immaterial. The second is the skill of attaining right conduct, in order to happiness And the third is the doctrine of signs, in order to understand things correctly ourselves, and convey knowledge of truth and duty clear ly to others.

It is at once apparent, that these three classes of knowledge are less distinctly separated, than those be fore considered. Indeed they seem rather branches from one root, than independent stocks of knowledge. Bacon's Philosophy' comprises the two first, if not also the last of them; and as he has divided and subdivided the objects of reason, they seem to us most naturally and intelligibly to fall under that class. We do not purpose, therefore, to abandon our first intention, in fayour of the projected alteration, even of the respected and valued Locke. On the year in which he died, was born David Hartley. His arrangement can receive at this time, but a rapid view. It in the main coincides with Bacon, and may be easily reduced to it. His worth as a man, and his excellence as an author, may be suitably acknowledged, when in the prosecu. tion of our plan, the immortal Ob. servations on Man,' shall come under examination. Whether we

1704

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Dr. Hartley's is, perhaps, a more simple, if less systematick classifi cation of the sciences, than either of the former. In this, knowledge of all kinds is reduced to seven general heads. 1...Philology, or

the knowledge of words, compre hending grammar and criticism, rhetorick and poetry. 2...Mathematicks, divided into arithmetick, which uses numbers as the exponents of quantity; geometry, which employs figures; and algebra, whose symbols comprehend both the former. 3...Logick, or the art of using words, for making dis coveries in the several branches of knowledge. 4...Natural history,

viz. of animals, plants, minerals, the earth, the atmosphere, and the heavenly bodies. 5...Civil history, i. e. of the manners, customs, laws, religion, &c. of the several nations, 6...Natural philosophy, including not only physicks, but astronomy, and psychology, or the theory of the human mind. 7...Religion, or as Bacon terms it, divine philoso, phy; and under this are to be referred ethicks and politicks, as they are designed to promote good, and lead man ultimately to the favour and enjoyment of Gop,

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For the Anthology.

༣། རའཉང

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LITERATURE IN FRANCE, IN 1806.

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IT is necessary to recollect something of the state of French literature before the decline and extinction of the ancient monarchy, or we may otherwise lament the loss of what was never possessed. No one, unless deeply tinctured with English prejudice, will venture to pronounce, that the French have any necessary and invincible inaptitude for any department of literature, who recollects that they have produced Malebranch in metaphysicks, Montesquieu in politicks, Descartes and Paschal in mathematicks, the Stephens, Casaubon, and Villoison in ancient literature, and poets without number and almost with out rivals. Still, however, French literature has always been more celebrated for richness than solidity, and they have ever considered poetry, eloquence, and the drama as its shining side, and resigned the palm in the severer sciences to their less vivacious, but more philosophical neighbours. They may be compared with any nation for every thing connected with the elegant, the gracious, the witty and alluring; but their writings have not been generally remarka ble for solid and philosophical, thinking, for clear and exact analysis, for simple and copious illus tration, and for wide, various, and deep research. If this general character of French literature be allowed to be just, there were certainly no symptoms under the ancient regime of any approaching degradation. Without any more proof, it will be granted that the old ages of the monarchy produ

ced its full proportion of scholars, when it is recollected that it was decorated by the names of Buffon, D'Alembert, Marmontel, CondilJac, Thomas, La Harpe, and Villoison.

It is not yet time to judge fairly of all the effects of the revolution. Most of those, who at present support the literary reputation of the country, received the elements of their education under the ancient system, and many, whose powers should have been now unfolding, were swept away by the torrent, which spares only the bad, the insignificant, and the unknown. Nor, on the other hand, are all the evils of the horrible conscription yet fully displayed. What an approach will it be to the barbarism of the early ages, if it should become the object of a great nation, not to embellish the mind, but to fortify the body, not to investigate moral and philosophical truth, but to make war a more rapid instument of destruction? Nor can it be said that this is altogether an idle fear, when we anticipate the necessary effects of the system. Eighty thousand (and when the emperour pleases, by an artifice in the arrangement, one hundred and twenty thousand) are annually subtracted from the peaceable population of the country, and the safety of all of a similar age is likewise endangered. A father, whose fortune is just sufficient to give an education to his son, (and the parents of literary men have been mostly of this class,) has all inducement to bestow it, in this way destroyed, by the probability

that his son will be torn from him just at the period, when his talents are beginning to be developed. To procure a subtitute has now become heavily expensive. What then remains for the wretched father, but to submit to his fate; give his son a military education, suffer him to become a soldier and be undone. To refinement, to morals, to literature, and to religion, he then most infallibly becomes dead.

If however we proceed to examine the actual state of literature without speculating on the future, it must be confessed, that in natural history, in the mathematicks, particularly as they are connected with the art of war, and above all in chemistry the character of the nation perhaps never before stood equally high. Such a constellation of talents, as the mathematical and physical class of the Institute exhibits, I suppose we might look for in vain in any other country of Europe. Without attempting to depreciate these sciences, for I am full of respect for them, it may however be observed, that although they call forth as much acuteness and even genius as any others, yet as they are advanced by immediate deduction from experiments, without many foreign intermediate ideas, they are connected with fewer collateral subjects, and demand therefore less previous and subsidiary acquisition, than the other branches of knowledge. If so, the great and merited renown of Fourcroy, Berthollet, and Vauquelin; of La Grange, Legendre, and La Place ;* of Cuvier, Haüy, and Lacépéde,howeverjustly it may

be appealed to, as a proof that the ingenuity of the nation has suffered no decay, does not alone assure us that its less severe sciences, its philosophy and taste, flourish without diminution.

Excepting then in physicks and mathematicks, if you inquire what standard scientifick works have appeared within the last fifteen years, the answer must be, none.

In metaphysicks this is not strange, since from some cause the French have never been very successful in its cultivation. Some of the works of Condillac are of value, but for his most important ideas he is indebted to Locke. The present metaphysicians content themselves with giving new names to old ideas, reviving exploded doctrines, writing flimsy books on materialism, from which they deduce a kind of Epicurean atheism, making distinctions without differences, and concluding with some flourish about the progress of science, reason, and illumination. The writers most in vogue at present are Cabanis and De Tracy.

On the subject of philosophy, including morals, I suppose I must be prejudiced; but certainly I find no traces of what I have been acaccustomed to in the English school. They who call themselves their votaries wander now only in the gardens of Epicurus; they retire not to the recess of Pythagoras, they sit not in the Academy of Plato, in the Lyceum of Aristotle, nor under the Portico of Zeno; how then should they enter the humble walks of the lowly and unassuming Nazerene? No; if, so long ago as when Dr. Priestley visited France, he was stared at when he avowed his sincere betute, he has lived longer than his repu: now weigh it very seriously against lief of Christianity; they would

I do not include La Lande, for, as I heard it observed by one of the Insti

tation.

In

his other claims to distinction. a late number of the Revue, when noticing a new edition of the works of Rollin, they gravely apologize for giving the name of philosopher to one, who was at the same time a Christian and a Jansenist.-But enough at present of a subject, on which I cannot write cheerfully.

The cause of ancient literature has received a severe blow from the revolution. In many of the Pensions Greek is not taught at all, and few learn more of Latin than to enable them to point a dull period, by some common-place quotation. The deep and ample learning of the Port-Royal and Sorbonne is no longer known. It expired with Villoison. They attempt to supply its place, by multiplying translations, and these to be sure fall

'thick as autumnal leaves That strew the vale of Vallambrosa.'

By the way, the very number of these translations affords one of the best answers to the opinion of La Motte, Perault, Voltaire, Condorcet, &c. that they render useless the knowledge of the original languages. For if it be possible to transfuse the beauties of the ancients into modern languages, some one translator must surely have by this time succeeded; but that this is not the case, the multitude of new attempts is a sufficient confession. If, indeed, notwithstanding our marble is of equal beauty, and our colours of equal brilliancy, it has been found a hopeless task to attempt to copy the charms of the Venus and Apollo, and the sublimity of the Transfiguration and Last Judgment, how can it be imagined that in languages of far in feriour flexibility, harmony, and grace, we should re-produce the wonders of the eloquence of an

tiquity, or revive the sublime raptures of its bards?

This poverty of classical knowledge is followed by its inevitable attendant, incorrect taste. In our inquiry into the causes of corrupt eloquence in any country, it is here that we always find our answer; it is by this, for instance, that we at once account for the false rhetorick, for the tumid, unnatural, and distorted kind of writing, which we every where see in America. It is commonly a shrewd symptom of the decline of taste, when nothing will do that is not terse, sententious, antithetical, and pointed; when every one is run away with a passion for calembourgs, bon mots, and the various forms of le bel ̧ csprit. I would by no means deny that there are still fine writers in France; there certainly are many, many well-read, classical scholars. But it is not to be denied, that the majority, and those too the most popular, have the faults at which I have hinted. They are full of exaggeration, and swell of ostentation without riches, of artificial passion, and pathos made by rule. Those higher flights of composition, which a fine writer hazards seldom, and which indeed owe their effect to their rare occurrence, they scatter in every page. What can be written in a more pitiful style than the proclamations to the army, the occasional flourishes in the bulletins, &c. although they are said in Paris to bear traces of an imperial hand? They would disgrace Touissaint or Dessalines.— Of the present state of French poetry, I have little to say. Delille, now extremely old, who has formed himself on the model of the English poets, and who, in truth, deserves his fame, must be considered as belonging to the last age.

On the whole, I suspect that

one is safe in saying, that, with the exception of Delille, there is no poet at present, who will outlive his age.

It would not be wonderful, how ever, if the spirit of literary enterprise were more completely extin guished than it actually is; for never has the world before seen a despotism over the press so extensive, systematick, and effectual, as is now exercised in France. Even under the most savage of the Roman emperours, Juvenal could publish his satires, though not perhaps with personal impunity; but in France, the author of any thing offensive is not only punished himself, but his work is rendered harmless by being completely suppressed before it sees the light. The Institute itself, though it must be allowed to be, in general, tolerably complaisant and docile, sometimes falls under his majesty's displeasure. They proposed,several years since, to publish a revised edition of the Dictionary of the Academy. I saw, in their transactions, the memoir, which was drawn up, and the names of the committee raised to execute this intention; but on inquiring for the work, I was told, that though it had been completed, and actually passed through the press, not a copy of it had ever publickly appeared. It seems, that they had thought it necessary to record the new words, which had been coined in the revolution, together with the new meanings which had been given to old words, and to subjoin to them the names of their authors. Under the word usurpateur, they maliciously mentioned a new sense given to it by the emperour, in a speech to the senate, and subjoined the authority of Bonaparte. For this and some similar liberties, the whole impres

sion was sequestrated. A poor bookseller ventured to republish Delille's poem, La Pitié, from the original text, as it appeared in Lon. don; he was rewarded by the seiz. ure of the work, and apartments were assigned to himself in the temple. It would be easy to col. lect many similar anecdotes.

These observations you will find hasty, and perhaps incorrect. They were made during a short residence of less than six months, confined exclusively to Paris. It is not, perhaps however unjust, to judge of the literature of the country, by what appears in the metropolis. The influence of a capi tal is every where great; but it is more so in France than in any other country of Europe. The darling object of pride and boast with a Frenchman is 'la belle,' 'la magnifique ville,' and we have seen this prejudice retain its force, when almost all others, however ingrained and inveterate, were loosened and swept away. We have seen Paris, during the revolution, quietly give law to the remotest provinces of the empire, wield, at the will of its mobs, their passions and opinions, produce every where an immediate imitation of its habits, however frantick and absurd, and obtain unresisting and implicit acquiescence in every new master, which its whim might impose.-There is another reason why Paris should be the centre of the literature of the nation. It is not in France as in England, where, in every town of any importance, you find ample publick and private libraries, and of course some literary society. So far from this, especially since the destruction of the convents, and provincial colleges, that a man of letters is compelled to resort to Paris, not only for patrons and associates in his

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