Mem. III. On certain Paradoxes in Eloquence. By M. BoRELLI. The introduction to this memoir is, if not paradoxical, at least more or less chargeable with exaggeration. The eloquent Academician paints in too vivid colours the corruption of tafte, the decline of eloquence, and the degradation of the fine arts, in modern times, unless he has his view turned to fome particular country. When be fays, that in the pulpit the Chriftian orators fpeak the language of the Lycæum, dress out their difcourfes with vain frivolous ornaments, that degrade the majeftic fimplicity of fcripture, and, instead of attacking vice, and expofing its deformity, paint it in brilliant colours, that render its alpect pleafing, he cannot fay that we do this; for cold reasoning has been, generally fpeaking, our method of attack and defence, in the cause of religion and morals and we leave the business of painting both vice and virtue to the gentlemen of the Exhibition. When he fays farther, that at the bar, the voice of paffion is heard inftead of the voice of truth, and that the clamours of hatred and vengeance put to filence the facred oracle. of justice,—that the eloquence of the honeft and virtuous heart, which invokes the protection of the laws, is banished the temple of Themis, and is fucceeded by the delirious transports of a heated fancy, we fuppofe he has in view his native country, where judiciary proceedings are indeed ftrangely carried on, and where there are fifty Linguets for one Dupaty. His accounts of the theatre are in a fimilar tone, and his reprefentation of the academics, whofe epigrammatic eloquence, fays he, degenerates from the pure tafte of former times, fhews us quorfum hæc tendunt, and throws fome topographical light on his Fhilippic.

As to the paradoxes in eloquence that conftitute properly the fubject of this differtation, they deferve a more particular notice. Why he gives the name of paradoxes to the opinions with refpect to eloquence, which he here combats with great judgment and power of argument, we cannot fee; for thefe opinions are rather erroneous than fingular.

In the Ift article of this memoir our Academician combats the fentiment of those who have maintained that GENIUS flands in no need of RULES. At the head of these are d'Alembert and Diderot, who looked upon genius fubmitting to rules, as a fovereign imprifoned by his flaves, and who afferted, that it can only become capable of great things when, free from all restraint, and following implicitly its inftinctive propensity, it foars at once to its object, without either confidering the difficulties it may meet with in its courfe, or the darkness in which it may be involved. Such language, fays our Academician, would be scarcely pardonable in that idle and frivolous clafs of men, who fear tudy, have an averfion to every thing that is didactic, and who, instead of being defirous of enlarging the fphere of their taste

and

and pleasure by an exact difcernment of true beauties and real faults, are fatisfied with the enjoyment of fome momentary fenfations, which binder them from feeling the tirefome weight or inutility of their exiftence. It is M. LINGUET, more especially, against whom our Academician here directs all the force of his literary arms and that, we think, with great fuccefs; though there be a good deal of logomachy obfervable in the course of this conteft.

In the fecond article M. BORELLI treats of the Nature of Eloquence; and here again we have nothing but controverfy. The learned Abbé Auger, author of a juftly celebrated tranflation of the most illuftrious Grecian orators, had maintained, in a preliminary difcourfe, that the nature and effence of eloquence confifted in determining immediately the wills of an audience. This imperfect and exceptionable definition is here feized and taken to pieces by our Academician, who will not fee that in illuftrating his defi nition the ingenious Abbé has made amends for its defects. We muft diftinguish,' fays the Abbé, between the end of eloquence and the means it employs. Its end is to give a prompt and immediate determination to the will. It employs, for this purpose, argument, which convinces the understanding, imagery, which ftrikes and pleafes the imagination, fentiments, which move and touch the heart.' This will not fatisfy M. BORELLI; who labours, with more wit and acuteness than fimplicity and found reafoning, to expofe it as paradoxical.

The third article exhibits an object of difcuffion, in which our Author feems to triumph over the Abbé, who, ftrangely enough indeed, excludes from the fphere of eloquence that kind of public fpeaking which the ancients called the demonftrative (whofe fcope was to praife or to blame), and confines eloquence to the deliberative, which is defigned to advife or diffuade, and the judicial, which is employed to accufe or to defend. The Abbé, we believe, will stand alone in this opinion, by which he ftrikes out of the lift of orators thofe famous panegyrifts of his own country, Maffillon, Flechier, Fenelon, and Boffuet, to whom if eloquence be denied, we must reject all ancient and modern definitions of that noble talent, and inquire anew in what it conLifts?

In the fourth article M. BORELLI difcuffes the following queftions: To whom did the Greeks give the appellations of orator, philofopher, and fophift? and can the art of peaking be feparated from the art of thinking? There is nothing uncommon in his folution of these questions.

Mem. IV. On the Causes of the Diverfity of Languages. By the Abbé DENINA. This learned and ingenious Academician, who thinks that a long time must have paffed before men could jearn to join together two fyllables, is alfo of opinion, that it

Was

was in the temperate or warm climates of our globe that languages were progreffively formed. However, in this memoir it is not his defign to go back to the origin of mankind, nor to inquire what was their primitive language. He fets out from facts palpably afcertained, from the language that was perfectly formed in Afia Minor a thoufand years before the Auguftan age, which, whatever was its origin, did not differ from that which was spoken in the eastern parts of Europe, in Greece, in Sicily, and in those parts of Italy which are now comprehended in the kingdom of Naples. From the different dialects of this ancient Afiatic language, the Latin, according to our Author, was formed, and became univerfal in the Weft. Having acquired its highest degree of perfection at the very period when the Romans had fubdued Spain and Gaul, it made, with facility, a rapid progrefs in the fe provinces, because there were no books in the ancient language of the Cantabrians, Celts, or Gauls. Thus in the four hundred years, during which Spain and Gaul remained under the dominion of the Romans, the language of thefe imperious victors gained fuch an afcendant as extinguished totally the ancient language of these two nations; and though the Latin language was corrupted by a variety of circumftances well known, it ftill remained predominant; nor did its corruption contribute to revive the ancient Celtiberian and Gallic languages. Even the Barbarians, who invaded the empire, accustomed themselves, for various reafons of policy and conveniency, to the language of the vanquished Romans; and though they mingled with it feveral of their own terms, yet the Latin, fuch as it was, ftill prevailed, and was the bafis of the Italian, Spanish, and French languages.

This we all know but we do not perhaps know, in all the curious detail with which the Abbé DENINA explains the matter, whence proceeded the diverfity of thefe languages that came from the fame root. The caufes of this diverfity are, according to our Author, phyfical, moral, or mixed. Those of the firft clafs comprehend climate and peculiarity of organization: no two nations (carcely two cities or villages) have precisely the fame accent: hence long vowels are fometimes abridged or fuppreffed, and fometimes lengthened and doubled, fo as to become dipththongs; confonants are changed or loft; fyllables are inverted by the tranfpofition of letters; and thus, at length, words are changed both in found and figure: thefe obfervations, again, have not the merit of novelty; but the examples by which they are illuftrated are curious. With respect to climate, our Academician obferves (as the learned Ihre, in his excellent gloffary, had obferved before him) that words, formed in a warm or temperate region, when they pafs into cold climates, lofe, as it were, a part of their body or fubftance. The ancient Scythians retained

no

no more than the first fyllables of the words, which they derived from the Greeks, and efpecially from the people of Afia Minor: and all the northern European nations have fhortened the words, which they have adopted from the Greeks and Latins. Thus the Turks metamorphofed Conftantinopolis into Stamboul, and the Lombards Mediolanum into Milan.

But the principal caufe of the diverfity of languages, which come from one common root, is, according to M DENINA, the variation above mentioned in the pronunciation of letters, vowels and confonants, that takes place in different nations. He illuftrates this by a great number of examples, which take up the whole of this memoir, and which we leave to the contemplation of the curious.

Mem. V. On the Origin of the German Language. By the Same. Who would think it? It comes from the Geek, though the Greek is no more like it than Hyperion is to a Satyr. There is a large portion of grammatical learning in the proofs of this genealogy, but there is also, in feveral places, a good deal of the longe petitum.

ART. II.

TABLEAUX des anciens Grecs et Romains, &c. i. e. An Account, accompanied with Engravings, of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and other cotemporary Nations; in which the private Life, the Customs and Ceremonies, the Arts and Sciences, the politica, and military State of the Ancients are amply described. First Volume. 4to. With Plates taken from ancient Statues and authentic Monuments. Paris. 1785.

TH

HIS work is published in numbers, which appear fucceffively every two months. If its Author, or Authors, perform what they promife, it will contain all the most curious and interefting discoveries that have been made, and the accounts that have been given, of the literary and philofophical treasures of antiquity in short, we are to have here, in a moderate compafs, the riches that are dispersed through a multitude of volumes. Sages, legiflators, priefts, poets, military commanders, and artifts, with the manners of the people they inftructed, governed, defended, or polished, are to be exhibited to view in their most interesting afpects, fo as to prefent a valuable collection of antiquities, in which a great variery of readers will find abundance of inftruction and entertainment We have now before us only the first number of this promising work, ushered in with a preliminary discourse, in which the Author difcovers capacity and knowledge, but not without a mixture of affectation and pertnefs, that engender now and then falie thoughts, obfcure antithefes, and injudicious parallels. He confiders, in this discourse, the state of political science and conduct among the

ancients,

ancients, and compares it with that of the moderns; and if we are to believe him, all was action and invention among the former, while all is repetition or imitation among the latter, both in the exercise of the arts, and in the practical fcience of government. This comparison (which we leave the judicious reader to appreciate) is reinforced by a pretty conceit (or concetti, as the Italians call a certain kind of description that deviates from truth and fimplicity); for our Author, looking at human nature through bis perfpective, perceives its adolefcence in the first nations of the Eaft, its manhood in the Grecians, Carthaginians, and Romans, and its old age, or (as he also terms it) the age of prudence, and fometimes of pufillanimity, in modern Europe. One would think, from all this, that the human fpecies, in our time and day, is verging towards dotage.-No fuch thing: for our Author, after having mortified us by a humiliating comparison, claps us on the fhoulder, and raifes us again into confequence, for the fake of two French kings, who luckily happened to come into exiftence in modern times; and he roundly gives the lie to thofe detractors of the age of Lewis XV. and Lewis XVI, who reprefent it as a period of decline and degradation ; ' for,' fays he, it is in the prefent age that a fecond faculty of the human mind (what he means by the epithet fecond we cannot conjecture) has been carried to a high degree of perfection, even the faculty of philofophifing or reasoning and if the art of painting is fublime, the art of following truth, through all its poffibilities, does not require lefs inventive genius.' And again- The prefent age is far from being deftitute of vigour; nay, when we confider the productions of this fecond faculty of the mind, which was formerly, as it were, in a state of inactivity (i. e. among the ancients), we must conclude that ours is the age of the multiplication of GENERA (kinds in English, which comprehend the fpecies), and not the age of annihilation.' Would not one conclude from fuch myfterious language, that the Author did not intend that we should come at his meaning? We guess it, however, and suppose he meant to fay, that the ancients furpaffed us in invention, and that we furpafs them in reasoning. The latter is certain; the former may be true; for the inventive spirit of the ancients was not reftrained in its flight by that scientific or logical precifion which is fuppofed to regulate, and confequently to check, the flights of modern genius. We fay supposed, because it is not our intention to quarrel with any modern poet, philofopher, or orator, who may be offended at this diftinction; nor even with the balloon geniuses, who have certainly foared much higher than the ancients, and have been much lefs checked in their flight by reafon or common sense.

But this preliminary difcourfe has perhaps kept us too long from the work itself, in which our Author appears to more ad

vantage