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merdam of Insects. Keil's and Gravesande's Physics. Gravesande's, Desagulier's and Rowning's Experimental Philosophy. Hill's History of Minerals and Fossils. Blackwell's Herbal. Martin's Philosophical Grammar, and Philosophia Britannica. The tracts which give an account of the late discoveries in electricity. Hale's Statics. Cotes' Hydrostatics and Pneumatics. Miscellanca Curiosa. Philosophical Transactions abridged, and those of the foreign academies of science. Muschenbroek's Physical Essays. Keil's, Winslow's and Heister's Anatomy. Monro's Osteology. Boerhaave's Economia Animalis. Ray, Malphighi, Tournefort, and Sloan on Plants. Keil's and Gregory's Astronomy. Pemberton's and Maclaurin's Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Discoveries. Sir Isaac's Principia, with the Jesuit's Comment. Dr. Halley's, Huygens' and Flamstead's Works. Whiston's Religious Principles of Astronomy. Smith's, Gregory's and Sir Isaac Newton's Optics. Boerhaave's Chemistry. To which add, Harris' Lexicon Technicum; Chambers' Dictionary; or the Encyclopedia now publishing.

A gentleman of fortune and leisure will do well to furnish himself with a few of the principal instruments used in experimental philosophy, as an air pump, which alone will yield almost an endless variety of entertainment; to which add a condensing engine; a microscope, with the solar aparatus, which likewise is alone sufficient to fill up the leisure hours of a life; a telescope of the Gregorian construction;* a set of prisms, and other glasses for the experiment in light and colours; a set of artificial mag. nets; an electrical machine; and a pair of Mr. Neale's patent globes.

SECTION V.

Of forming a Taste in polite Learning and Arts.

TO say, that a gentleman has attained the utmost perfection of the human genius, who is ignorant of the politer sciences of criticism, poetry, oratory, and antiquities, and

The best and largest instruments of this kind, beyond comparison, that have ever been made, are those constructed by Mr. Short of Surry-street, in the Strand, London.

of the elegant arts of painting, music, sculpture, and architecture, would undoubtedly be improper. And yet it may justly be affirmed, that a very moderate skill in them is sufficient; as that kind of knowledge is at best only the embellishment, not the substantial excellence of a character. Nor can it be denied, that many, especially men of fortune, do pursue the study of those elegancies to lengths inconsistent with the shortness and uncertainty of life, and with the awful and serious business to be done in it. Solid and useful knowledge, especially among the great, gives way almost entirely to taste. And even of that, a very great part is only affectation and cant, rather than true discernment. In music, for example, I think it must be owned, that there are few civilized nations in which there is so little true taste, as in England; the proof of which is, the extremely small number of our countrymen and women, who excel either in performance or composition. In France and Italy, on the contrary, and several other countries of Europe, there are very few towns, or even villages, in which there are not some able artists in music. And yet we know, that there is not a country in the world, in which musicians, especially foreigners, are so much encouraged as here. This cannot be ascribed to our natural taste for music; for that would appear in our excelling in the art. It must therefore be owing to an affectation of what we do not possess, which costs us a great many thousands a year, and must yield but very little entertainment. For the pleasure a person receives from music, or any of the other beaux arts, is proportionable to the taste and discernment he has in them.

Perhaps, the same might be said of some other elegancies as well as of music. But I shall only in general add, that whoever pursues what is merely ornamental, to the neglect of the useful business of life; and instead of considering such things only as ornaments and amusements, makes them his whole or chief employment, does not understand, nor act up to the true dignity of his nature.

On the study of classical learning and antiquities, I cannot help saying, that it is really a matter of no small concern, to see men of learning straining beyond all bounds of sense in heaping encomiums on the great writers of antiquity, which there is reason to think those great men

would blush to read. To hear those gentlemen, one would imagine the ancients all giants in knowledge, and the modcrns, pigmies. Whereas it is much more probable, that the antiquity of the world was its youth, or immature age, and that the human species, like an individual, have gradually improved by length of time; and, having the advantage of the inquiries and observations of the past ages, have accordingly profited by them, and brought real and properly scientific knowledge to heights, which we have no reason to imagine the ancients had any conception of.

The whole advantage antiquity seems to have of the present times as far as we know, and it would be strange if we should reason upon what we do not know, is in the works of fancy. The style of the ancient orators and poets is perhaps superior to that of any of our productions, in grandeur and in elegance. Nor is it any wonder it should be so. In the popular governments of Greece and Rome, where almost every point was to be gained by dint of eloquence, and where kings were clients to private pleaders, it was to be expected, that the art of oratory should be cultivated, and encouraged to the utmost.

The very sound of the Greek and Latin gives the writings in those languages a sweetness and majesty, which none of our feeble, unmusical tongues can reach. How should an English or French poet have any chance of equalling the productions of those who wrote in a language which expressed the most common thoughts with more pomp of sound, than our modern tongues will lend to the most sublime conceptions?

Ton d'apameibomenos prosephe podas okys Achilleus.
"The swift footed Achilles answered him."

HOM.

Here is more grandeur of sound to express almost nothing, than Milton could find in the whole compass of our language to clothe the greatest thoughts that perhaps ever entered into an uninspired imagination. For what is there in the Iliad, stript of the majesty of the Greek, that can equal the following hymn to the Supreme Being, sung by the first parents of mankind in innocence:

"These are thy glorious works, Parent of good

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Almighty! Thine this universal frame,

"Thus wondrous fair. Thyself how wondrous then!
"Unspeakable! who sitt'st above these heav'ns,

To us invisible, or dimly seen

"In these thy lowest works. Yet these declare
"Thy goodness beyond thought, and pow'r divine.
"Speak ye, who best can tell, ye son's of light!
"Angels! for ye behold him, and with songs
"And choral symphonies, day without night,
"Circle his throne rejoicing. Ye in heav'n!
“On earth join all ye creatures to extol,

"Him first, him last, him midst, and without end," &c.

How would these thoughts shine in IIomer's Greek! How would Longinus have celebrated such a passage in a venerable ancient! How would our Daciers and our Popes have celebrated it! Let us not therefore be imposed on by sound; but while we pay due praise to antiquity, let us not refuse it to such of the moderns as have deserved it even in those arts, in which the ancients have exhibited their utmost abilities.

But though it should be confessed, that the ancient poets, orators, and sculptors have in some respect outdone the moderns; when this is said, all is said, that can with truth be affirmed of their superiority to us. For in most parts of solid science, they were mere children: there physiology is egregious, trifling, and groundless hypothesis, drawn not so much from nature as from fancy. Their theology or mythology is a mixture of sense, mystery, fable, and impurity. Their ethics are well enough for what they have delivered. But it is a structure without connexion, and without foundation. Whoever has studied Woolaston's Religion of Nature delineated, will hardly think Aristotle's Ethics, or Tully's Offices, worth reading, for the sake of improvement in real and scientific knowledge of the foundation and obligations of morality. He who has digested Dr. Clark's noble work, will hardly have recourse to Cicero, Of the Nature of the Gods, for just ideas of the Supreme Being, and a rational scheme of religion. Who would name such philosophers as Pliny, or Elian, with Mr. Boyle, or Mr. Ray? Who would think of comparing Aristotle's Logic with Mr. Locke's, or Ptolemy's Astronomy with Sir Isaac Newton's? There are many whole sciences known in our times, of which the ancients had not the least suspicion, and arts of which they have had no conception. All the discoveries made by those noble instruments, the telescope, the microscope, and the airpump; the phenomena of electricity; the circulation of the blood, and various other discoveries in anatomy;

the whole theory of light and colours; almost all that is known of the laws by which the machine of the world is governed; the methods of algebra and fluxions; printing, clocks, the compass, gunpowder, and I know not how many more, are the productions of the industry and sagacity of the moderns. It is therefore very unaccountable, that many studious men should express, on all occasions, such an unbounded and unreasonable admiration of the ancients, merely for the elegancies and sublimities, which appear in their works of fancy, which are likewise disgraced in many places by a trifling and childish extravagance, running often so far into the marvellous, as quite to lose sight of the probable. Witness Virgil's prophetical harpies, bleeding twigs, and one-eyed Brobdignagians; Homer's speaking horses, scolding goddesses, and Jupiter enchanted with Venus' girdle; and Ovid's string of unnatural and monstrous fictions from the beginning to the end of his book!

Whoever may be disposed to question what is here said as a peculiar or new notion, may read Mr. Locke on the Conduct of the Understanding, and Wotton's and Baker's Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning; there he will find the subject discussed in a more copious manner, than the bounds of this treatise would allow.

It is therefore very necessary, that in cultivating a taste, people take care to value the ancients only for what is truly valuable in them, and not to perfer them, universally and in the gross, to the moderns, who by the advantage of succeeding to the labours of their ancestors, have acquired incomparably the superiority over them in almost all parts of real knowledge drawn from actual observation; in method and closeness of reasoning; in depth of inquiry; in more various ways, as well as more compendious methods of coming at truth; and, in general, in whatever is useful for improving the understanding; advantages as much superior to what serves only to refine the imagination, and work upon the passion, as it is of more consequence that a man receive improvement-in true knowledge, than that he pass his life in a pleasing dream.

Besides the ancient historians mentioned under the article of history, whoever would form his taste upon the best models, must be in some measure acquainted with the

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