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in the names of persons and places. We find in our English writers, how much the proper name of one of our own countrymen pulls down the language that surrounds it, and familiarizeth a whole sentence. For our ears are so often used to it, that we find something vulgar and common in the sound and cant; but fancy the pomp and solemnity of style too much humbled and depressed by it. For this reason, the authors of poems and romances, who are not tied up to any particular set of proper names, take the liberty of inventing new ones, or at least of chusing such as are not used in their own country; and, by this means, not a little maintain the grandeur and majesty of their language. Now the proper names of a Latin or Greek author have the same effect upon us as those of a romance, because we meet with them no where else but in books. Cato, Pompey, and Marcellus, sound as great in our ears, who have none of their families among us, as Agamemnon, Hector, and Achilles; and therefore, though they might flatten an oration of Tully to a Roman reader, they have no such effect upon an English one. What I have here said, may perhaps give us the reason why Virgil, when he mentions the ancestors of three noble Roman families, turns Sergius, Lemmius, and Cluentius, which might have degraded his verse. too much, into Sergestus, Mnestheus, and Cloanthus, though the three first would have been as high and sonorous to us as the other.

But though the poets could make thus free with the proper names of persons, and in that respect enjoyed a privilege beyond the prose writers; they lay both under an equal obligation, as to the names of places for there is no poetical geography, rivers are the same in prose and verse; and the towns and countries of

a Pulls down the language that surrounds it. Another instance of expression purely Addisonian.

b But. It should be-and.

a romance differ nothing from those of a true history. How oddly, therefore, must the name of a paltry village sound to those who were well acquainted with the meanness of the place; and yet how many such names are to be met with in the catalogues of Homer and Virgil? Many of their words must, therefore, very much shock the ear of a Roman or Greek, especially whilst the poem was new; and appear as meanly to their own countrymen, as the duke of Buckingham's Putney Pikes and Chelsea Curiaseers do to an Englishman. But these their catalogues have no such disadvantageous sounds in them to the ear of a modern, who scarce ever hears of the names out of the poets, or knows any thing of the places that belong to them. London may sound as well to a foreigner, as Troy or Rome; and Islington, perhaps, better than London to them who have no distinct ideas arising from the names. I have here only mentioned the names of men and places; but we may easily carry the observation further, to those of several plants, animals, &c. Thus, where Virgil compares the flight of Mercury to that of a water-fowl, Servius tells us, that he purposely omitted the word Mergus, that he might not debase his style with it; which, though it might have offended the niceness of a Roman ear, would have sounded more tolerable in ours. Scaliger, indeed, ridicules the old scholiast for his note; because, as he observes, the word Mergus is used by the same poet in his Georgies. But the critic should have considered that, in the Georgics, Virgil studied description more than majesty; and therefore might justly admit a low word into that poem, which would have disgraced his Æneid, especially when a god was to be joined with it in the comparison.

As antiquity thus conceals what is low and vulgar in an author, so does it draw a kind of veil over any expression that is strained above nature, and recedes too much from the familiar forms of speech. A violent Grecism, that would startle a Roman

at the reading of it, sounds more natural to us, and is less distinguishable from other parts of the style. An obsolete, or a new word, that made a strange appearance at first to the reader's eye, is now incorporated into the tongue, and grown of a piece with the rest of the language. And as for any bold expressions in a celebrated ancient, we are so far from disliking them, that most readers single out only such passages as are most daring, to commend; and take it for granted, that the style is beautiful and elegant, where they find it hard and unnatural. Thus has time mellowed the works of antiquity, by qualifying, if I may so say, the strength and rawness of their colours, and casting into shades the light that was at first too violent and glaring for the eye to behold with pleasure.

OF THE

CHRISTIAN RELIGION."

[THIS treatise was one of the works intrusted to Tickell, by Addison, on his death-bed, and first published in the edition of 1721. It has since been republished several times, and once with notes, by Corevon, translated by Purdy, London, 1807. It was included also in Watson's Theological Tracts. A French translation appeared in Lausanne in 17-. Had Addison lived, he would undoubtedly have enlarged it, and worked it up to a more perfect form. As it stands, it can only be considered as the rough draft of a more extensive work.—G.]

SECTION I.

I. General division of the following discourse, with regard to Pagan and Jewish authors, who mention particulars relating to our Saviour.

II. Not probable that any such should be mentioned by Pagan writers who lived at the same time, from the nature of such transactions.

III. Especially when related by the Jews:

IV. And heard at a distance by those who pretended to as great miracles as their own.
V. Besides that, no Pagan writers of that age lived in Judæa or its confines.

VI. And because many books of that age are lost.

VII. An instance of one record proved to be authentic.

VIII. A second record of probable, though not undoubted, authority.

THAT I may lay before you a full state of the subject under our consideration, and methodize the several particulars that I touched upon in discourse with you; I shall first take notice of such Pagan authors, as have given their testimony to the history of our Saviour; reduce these authors under their respective a The following work on the Christian Religion, has great merit; but, from the nature of it, required a greater detail, in the execution. For, as an ancient writer has well observed,-fit totum et minus plenum, cum tanLactantius. Ep. D. J. praf.

a

classes, and shew what authority their testimonies carry with them. Secondly, I shall take notice of Jewish authors in the same light.

II. There are many reasons, why you should not expect that matters of such a wonderful nature should be taken notice of by those eminent Pagan writers, who were contemporaries with Jesus Christ, or by those who lived before his disciples had personally appeared among them, and ascertained the report which had gone abroad concerning a life so full of miracles.

Supposing such things had happened at this day in Switzerland, or among the Grisons, who make a greater figure in Europe than Judea did in the Roman empire, would they be immediately believed by those who live at a great distance from them? or would any certain account of them be transmitted into foreign countries within so short a space of time as that of our Saviour's public ministry? Such kinds of news, though never so true, seldom gain credit, till some time after they are transacted and exposed to the examination of the curious, who by laying together circumstances, attestations, and characters of those who are concerned in them, either receive, or reject what at first none but eye-witnesses could absolutely believe or disbelieve. In a case of this

ta rerum multitudo in angustum coarctanda sit; et brevitate ipsâ minùs clarum, maximè cùm et argumenta plurima et exempla, in quibus lumen est probationum, necesse sit præteriri. However, the plan was ably conceived, and would, without doubt, if the author had lived, have been drawn out to a just extent. For we are told, he had taken great pains in collecting materials for it, and was more assiduous in digesting them, that his health would well allow.

Thus our Addison, like the admirable Pascal, closed his valuable life in meditating a defence of the Christian Religion. One is not surprised to find this agreement in the views of two such men; the one, the sublimest genius, and the other, the most cultivated, of modern times. But there was this lamented difference in their story. The spirit of Jansenism, falling on a temper naturally scrupulous, and a constitution, always infirm, threw a sombrous fanatic air on Pascal's religious speculations, as it did on his life while our happier countryman, by the benefit of better health, and juster principles, maintained a constant sobriety in the conduct of each.

a Life by Mr Tickell.

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