interefting part of the work to many readers, and as he has chosen to announce it in such a way as might suffer by any abridgment, we had selected that article as a specimen of the Author's style and manner of writing: but as the extract would be too long for our Journal, we must refer to the work at large. Our readers will find the passage which we here recommend to their particular notice, by turning to p. 230, and proceeding to p. 244. An ART. II. SYLVA, or the Wood; being a Collection of Anecdotes, Differtations, Characters, Apophthegms, original Letters, Bons Mots, and other little Things. By a Society of the Learned. 8vo. 55. Boards. Payne. 1786. TH HE contents of this volume are various both as to subject and execution. We fometimes meet with trite remarks and infignificant anecdotes; and once or twice we were disgusted with a coarse joke and an indelicate story; on the whole, however, this is a collection of confiderable merit. The Author (for he is more than a compiler, though he deals much in *extracts and quotations) is evidently a man of acute discernment and found morals. He appears to have had much experience of the world; and, in general, hath formed a just estimate of men and manners, principles and times. He writes with candour and liberality; and he is a friend to public order and decorum; but he loudly exclaims against those who set up for reformers of abuses in church and state, giving them little credit either for integrity or wisdom, and placing their pretenfions to the score of pride, disappointment, ignorance, or imposture.But here, furely, a proper discrimination is necessary. As a specimen of the entertainment that the reader may expect from this miscellany, we will present him with a few extracts, taken at adventure. Of making a Figure. 'I have read of a squib which was reprefented bursting, with this motto under it, peream dum luceam-" let me perish, if I do but shine." The same motto will do for all, who diffipate their substance by shining or figuring with shew and equipage. 6 When a husbandman claimed kinship with Robert Grosthead, Bishop of Lincoln, and thereupon requested from him an office, Coufin," said the bishop, " if your cart be broken, I'll mend it; " if your plow be old, I'll give you a new one, and even feed to "sow your land: but a husbandman I found you, and a husband " man I'll leave you." The bishop thought it kinder (as should seem) to serve him in his way, than to take him out of it; and perhaps Stephen Duck, the thresher, had been better provided for, if, * Some very judicious papers in this collection are taken from the IRENARCH of Dr. Heathcote; the third edition of which was published in 1781. Rev. Feb. 1787. I in stead instead of being first pensioned and then ordained, he had been en dowed with ten acres of land, and suffered to thresh on. By turning the laborious thresher into an inactive parson, they brought lunacy first, and then suicide, upon a man who might otherwise have enjoyed himself with two cows and a pig, and ended his days in ferenity and ease.' Marriage of old Men. 'Were I advised to take another wife, under the mean and unmanly prospect of being coddled now I am old, my reply would be in some such terms as these :-" My dear Sir, I am "greatly obliged by your attention to my happiness, but (with " your leave) I will reserve the little strength and spirits I have remaining for the better support of my old age. Secondly, though "I am not so old as Alcestes (who lately married a second wife at "the age of 70), yet I am old enough to have contracted many ways and humours, which, being by habit become natural, can not now be contradicted without making me unhappy: but they " would be contradicted by new connections, or any new system " of living. Thirdly, if a man has any decent pride remaining, hé " will disdain to be estimated merely as a convenience: but an old " fellow cannot be accepted in marriage from any other motive. " Lastly, I have lived long enough to have but one general object; " and that is, to bear the growing infirmities of old age, and to wait my dissolution with a spirit and temper as peaceful and resigned, as contented and serene as may be. I am therefore de" termined to continue as I am." " • Meanwhile, and to return once more to the subject, if an old man will fo far forget himself as to marry, he should, above all things, avoid a young wife; left, as Bayle expresses it, " he expose his fore" head to a shameful and very uneasy disgrace." A young man is not exempt from this misfortune; how should an old? If these things happen where the wood is green, what can be expected where it is dry? Besides, if he escape the thing, he may be haunted with the idea; that is, he may suspect himself to be a cuckold, though he really be not; which, perhaps, is a greater evil than to be one without fufpecting it.' No one can object to the justness, as well as the vivacity of these remarks; but the allusion to a proverb, which is become facred from the sacred occasion on which it was uttered, is, in our idea, very improper; and the wit which applies it in the present instance cannot recompense, with serious readers, for its profaneness. Yet we exculpate the Author from any purpose to ridicule what is facred. He is, we are perfuaded, a man of better principles, and writes with a real defire to ferve the interests of virtue and religion. But when some persons hit on a lucky thought, they are unwilling to lose it; and it is suffered to take its chance, without confidering the ill use that may be made of it by some, and the offence that it will give to others. Of representation in Parliament. • A representative in parliament is a person deputed by individuals to execute their portion of the public business in the national council or assembly, and vested by them with complete powers in order thereunto. In this fituation, he is to use his best judgment towards knowing and ascertaining, and his best endeavours in promoting, what shall be most for the national good; and this without any retrospective view upon his constituents, or any regard to their sense of affairs: for it may be, either that the sense of those constituents cannot be conveyed to him, or that they have no sense to convey. And that this independency of the representative is supposed by the constitution, appears plainly from hence, viz. that the powers with which he is invested are not revocable at pleasure, or before the expiration of the term for which they were given; even though they should be employed, not only against the fense of the constituents, but even against the national weal itself. How far such an ordainment of things is eligible, I say not: but I say, that if a representative be nothing more than a person who fits in the House of Commons to speak the sense of a certain number of people, as he receives it by the post out of the country, he is no better than a tube, an organ pipe, a kind of wind instrument which fends forth found mechanically.' This, however, seems to be too nice and too important a question to be thus confidently decided in this summary way. A Liberty of the Press. • I shall not descant whether abuses ought or ought not to abolish its use; but I am fincerely perfuaded, that if our present manners hold, they most assuredly will. When the press ridicules openly and barefacedly the most revered and fundamental doctrines of religion : when the press, in political matters, attacks persons without any regard to things, or perhaps attacks things for the sake of abusing persons: when the press not only wantonly affaults the first characters in church and state, but even facrifices the peace and quiet of private families to the sport and entertainment of an ill-natured public: (and is it not notorious that all this is done daily?)-then, I say, this reasonable, noble, and manly liberty is degenerated into a base, unwarrantable, cruel licentiousness; and this licentiousness - determine as logically, and contend as loudly, as you please-will, by an unavoidable consequence flowing from the nature and conftitution of things, fooner or later bring about its destruction. Things are so formed, that extremes must ever beget, and prepare the way for, extremes. Abuses of every thing must destroy the use of every thing: and if the people grow licentious and ungovernable, it is as natural, perhaps as necessary, for their rulers to encrease their restraint, and abridge their liberty, as for the breakers of horses to tighten the reins in proportion as their steeds shall shew an impatience: be managed.' To confider the people as 'horses' [mere beasts of burden], and men in power as their riders, seems to be a favourite idea with all those writers who unnaturally employ themselves in forging their own fetters, and who would madly give up a nation's liberty, merely because, like every other good, it is liable to be abused by a few individuals; offenders who may be, and often are, reftrained and punished by the laws of the land. On the fame principle we might relinquish every blessing which God hath bestowed on us! Duelling. • Another good instance to show the prevalence of manwers over laws. "The law," says Mr. Hawkins, "fo far abhors " duelling, 12 "duelling, that not only the principal, who actually kills the other, " but also his seconds, are guilty of murder, whether they fought or not: and the punishment of course is death." But in spite of this sanction, strong and powerful as it is, is not the age of Quixotifm coming on again? Does not the humour rodomontade prevail among the great? and is it not creeping down, even to apprentices and attorneys clerks' [and, we may even add, PARISH PRIESTS]? • I called it Quixotism; and surely I had reason. Observe the manners of our present duellifts; weigh the principles they go upon; attend to the ceremonial of their engagements, and tell me then, if any adventures of the famous Knight of La Mancha are built upon a more foolish foundation, and accompanied with more folemn, yet more ridiculous, rites than theirs. 6 Perhaps a stronger instance could not be brought, than this before us, to shew the prevalence of fashion, not only over laws, but over sense, reason, equity, and humanity. The duellist is never an amiable, and oftentimes a bad composition: but he hath honour for his sanction and support; Honour, all-powerful honour: and this vain unmeaning empty word is, through the prevalence of fashion, sufficient to preserve him upon terms with society, and to secure his reception as usual among gentlemen.' Of Logic; and the practical Use of it. A countryman, for the entertainment of his son, when returned from the university, ordered fix eggs to be boiled; two for him, two for his mother, and two for himself: but the son, itching to give a specimen of his newly acquired science, boiled only three. To the father, asking the reason of this, "Why," fays the fon, "there are fix."-" How fo ?" says the father, "I can make but three."-" No!" replies the young fophifter, " is not here one? (counting them out) is not there two? " and is not there three ? and do not one, two, and three, make fix ?" -"Well then," says the father, "I'll take two, your mother shall "have one, and you shall have the other three." Many appearances may tempt one to suspect, that the understanding, difciplined with logic, is not so competent for the investigation of truth, as if left to its natural operations. A man of "wit," says Bayle, "who applies himself long and closely to logic, "feldom fails of becoming a caviller *; and by his fophistical fub"tleties perplexes and embroils the very theses he hath defended. "He chuses to destroy his own work, rather than forbear disputing; " and he starts fuch objections against his own opinions, that his " whole art cannot folve them. Such is the fate of those who apply themselves too much to the fubtleties of dialectics." This is ** These fyllogiftici are terrible company to men in general, and fit only for one another. With them you cannot be faid to have convertation, but altercation rather: for there is something so captious and litigious in their spirit, that they draw every the most triffing thing that can be started into a dispute. Before such, you must not expect to talk at ease; that ease and indolence, which make a man careless about both ideas and language: no, you must be wary and correct; you must be always upon the defensive; you must keep a perpetual guard, as you would over your purse, were a pickpocket in the room.' the the opinion of Bayle, who probably knew from feeling and experience the truth of what he said; for he was a very great logician, as well as a very great sceptic. • Our memorable Chillingworth is another instance to prove, that logic, instead of assisting, may possibly obstruct and hurt the understanding. Chillingworth," says Lord Clarendon, who knew him well, " was a man of great fubtlety of understanding, and had spent "all his younger time in difputation; of which he arrived to fo great a mastery, as not to be infer or to any man in those skir"mishes: but he had, with his notable perfection in this exercise, "contracted such an irresolution and habit of doubting, that by degrees he grew confident in nothing, and a sceptic at least in the greatest mysteries of faith. All his doubts grew out of himself, when " he assisted his scruples with the strength of his own reason, and was then too hard for himself." " • To conclude. - What was the meaning of that stricture upon Seneca, Verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera, which, according to Lord Bacon, may thus be applied to the schoolmen, Quæftionum minutiis fcientiarum frangunt foliditatem? Why, that by their litigiofa fubtilitas, as he calls it, by their logical refinements and distincions, they had chopped truth so down into mincemeat, as to leave it not only without proportion or form, but almost without substance. We recommend these essays (with exceptions, in some instances, to the Author's politics] to the perusal of those who either read for amusement or instruction; and if they possess any relish for wit without petulance, ridicule without ill-nature, or sober sense without formality or dulness, they will find something of each to gratify their taste; and if this volume doth not afford them so copious a banquet as they may wish, yet it will put them in the way of making the entertainment more complete, by the exercise of their own understandings, and the study of the best Authors. B-k. ART. III. PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS of the Royal Society. MATHEMATICAL and ASTRONOMICAL Papers. The Latitude and Longitude of York determined from a Variety of astronomical Obfervations; together with a Recommendation of the Method of determining the Longitude of Places by Observations of the Moon's Transit over the Meridian. By Edward Pigott, Efq. T would be unnecessary to enter into a minute account I of all the methods here described, or a detail of the feveral observations recorded by Mr. Pigott. He makes the latitude of York 53° 57′ 45"+; and longitude, by occultations of fixed stars by the moon, 4' 27", by the moon's paffing the meridian 4 24", by Jupiter's first sfatellite 4' 31", and by a lunar eclipse 4' 16", west, in time. The relative fituations of Greenwich and York being now, with tolerable exactness, determined, measuring the distances between these two places 13 i |
