we confult our reason, we fhall be far from following the examples of our fellow-creatures, in this as in most other cafes, who are fo proud of being rational. We fhall neither read to foothe our indolence, nor to gratify our vanity: as little fhall we con→ tent ourselves to drudge like grammarians and critics, that others may be able to ftudy, with greater eafe and profit, like philofophers and statesmen: as little fhall we affect the flender merit of becoming great scholars at the expence of groping all our lives in the dark mazes of antiquity. All these mistake the true drift of study, and the true ufe of hiftory. Nature gave us curiofity to excite the industry of our minds; but she never intended it should be made the principal, much less the fole, object of their application. The true and proper object of this application, is a constant improvement in private and in public virtue. An application to any study, that tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and better citizens,

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is at best but a fpecious and ingenious fort of idleness to use an expreffion of TILLOT SON: and the knowledge we acquire by it is a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing This creditable kind of ignorance is, in my opinion, the whole benefit which the generality of men, even of the moft learned, reap from the ftudy of history: and yet the study of history feems to me, of all other, the moft proper to train us up to private and public virtue.

Your lordship may very well be ready by this time, and after so much bold cenfure on my part, to afk me what then is the true use of history? in what refpects

it

may ferve to make us better and wifer? and what method is to be purfued in the ftudy of it, for attaining these great ends? I will anfwer you by quoting what I have read fome where or other, in DIONYSIUS HALICARN. I think, that history is philosophy teaching by examples. We need but to caft our eyes on the world, and we shall

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fee the daily force of example: we need but to turn them inward, and we shall foon difcover why example has this force. "Pauci prudentiâ," fays TACITUS, “ho"nefta ab deterioribus, utilia ab noxiis difcernunt: plures aliorum eventis do"centur." Such is the imperfection of human understanding, fuch the frail temper of our minds, that abstract or general propofitions, tho never so true, appear obfcure or doubtful to us very often, till they are explained by examples; and that the wifeft leffons in favour of virtue go but a little way to convince the judgment, and determine the will, unless they are enforced by the fame means, and we are obliged to apply to ourselves what we fee happen to other men. Inftructions by precept have the further disadvantage of coming on the authority of others, and frequently require a long deduction of reasoning. "Homines ampliùs "oculis quam auribus credunt: longum "iter eft per praecepta, breve & efficax per exempla." The reafon of this judgment,

ment, which I quote from one of SENECA'S epiftles in confirmation of my own opinion, refts I think on this; that when examples are pointed out to us, there is a kind of appeal, with which we are flattered, made to our fenfes, as well as our understandings. The inftruction comes then upon our own authority: we frame the precept after our own experience, and yield to fact when we refift fpeculation. But this is not the only advantage of instruction by example; for example appeals not to our understanding alone, but to our paffions likewife. Example afswages these, or animates them; fets paffion on the side of judgment, and makes the whole man of a piece, which is more than the strongest reasoning and the cleareft demonstration can do and thus forming habits by repetition, example fecures the obfervance of those precepts which example infinuated. Is it not PLINY, my lord, who fays, that the gentleft, he should have added the most effectual, way of commanding, is by example? "Mitiùs jubetur VOL. I. "exemplo.

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exemplo." The harfheft orders are foftened by example, and tyranny itself becomes perfwafive. What pity it is that fo few princes have learned this way of commanding? But again; the force of examples is not confined to thofe alone that pass immediately under our fight: the examples that memory fuggefts have the fame effect in their degree, and an habit of recalling them will foon produce the habit of imitating them. In the fame epiftle, from whence I cited a paffage juft now, SENECA fays that CLEANTHES had never become fo perfect a copy of ZENO, if he had not paffed his life with him; that PLATO, ARISTOTLE, and the other philofophers of that fchool, profited more by the example, than by the difcourfe of SOCRATES. [But here by the way SENECA mistook; for SoCRATES died two years according to fome, and four years according to others, before the birth of ARISTOTLE: and his mistake might come from the inaccuracy of those who collected for him; as ERASMUS ob