lish reader, in his own eloquent exposition of it. It occupies, chiefly, though not wholly, his treatise "On the Advancement of Learning." Desiring, however, to make his opinions accessible to all learned men in Europe, he caused the book, with large additions, to be translated into Latin, under the title "De Augmentis Scientiarum."

In the same language only did he teach the other sections of his system. The most important of these he called the "Novum Organum," challenging, in the courageous self-confidence of genius, a comparison with the ancient" Organon," the logical text-book of Aristotle. In this treatise mainly it is, that he expounds the methods he proposed for solving the second of his problems. This is the portion of his speculations which has been most studied, and which has given rise to the greater part of the controversies in regard to the value of his philosophy. The design on which he worked may easily be understood.

The Novum Organum" is a contribution to Logic, the science which is the theory of the art of Reasoning: it undertakes to supply certain deficiencies, under which the Ancient or Aristotelian Logic admittedly labours. In all sciences, mental as well as physical, the premises on which we found are of such a character, that we are in a greater or less degree liable, in reasoning from them, to infer more than they warrant. The ancient logic is able to show that such inferences are bad, as involving, in one way or another, the logical fallacy of inferring from a part to the whole but it is powerless when, presenting to it several conclusions, all invalidly inferred, none of them certainly true, but all of them in themselves more or less probable, we ask it to aid us in determining their comparative probability. What Bacon did was this. He endeavoured to purify our reasoning from such premises, by subjecting it to a system of checks and counterchecks, which should have the effect, not indeed of totally expunging the error of the conclusion, but of making it as small as possible, and of reducing it in many cases to an inappreciable minimum. This is, on the one side, the purpose of those laws by which he guards our assumption of premises, as in his famous ex position of the "idols" or prejudices of the human mind: and it is also, on the other side, the used designed to be served by the rules he lays down, for determining the comparative sufficiency of given instances as specimens of the whole class in regard to which we wish to draw inferences from them.

The perfect solution of this ambitious problem is unattainable; but, in every science, progress will be proportional to the extent to which the partial solution is carried. In the physical

sciences it may be worked out very far; and, in this wide region of knowledge, not only were Bacon's principles happily accordant with the turn which philosophy was about to take, but the spirit and the details of his system alike chimed in with the practical and cautious temper of the English nation. It cannot well be doubted, that his writings, though they received in his lifetime the neglect for which he proudly prepared himself, gave a mighty impulse to scientific thinking for at least a century after him. It is perhaps equally certain that, even in the philosophy of corporeal things, discovery has now reached a point, at which Bacon's methods are much less extensively useful: and, in our own country, as well as abroad, some of the most active minds have lately begun to aim at fitting new instruments to the strong and flexible hand of modern science.

3. On philosophy in England, though not in Scotland, the b. 1588. influence of Hobbes has been much greater than that of d. 1679. Bacon. In our own generation his memory has profited, more largely than that of almost any other philosopher, by that prevalent disposition, half-paradoxical, half-generous, which has resuscitated so many defunct celebrities, and given defenders to so many opinions that used to be universally condemned as dangerous or false.

Some of his doctrines, and these making the very key-stone of his system, are not vindicated by any one. When he lays down his political theory of uncontrolled absolutism; and when, with strict consistency, he desires to subject religion and morality themselves to the will of the sovereign: his most zealous admirers content themselves with interpreting him for the better, in a fashion reminding one of that which has been adopted, in a more plausible case, by the excusers of Machiavelli. By the writer himself, all his other speculations seem to have been intended as merely subordinate to the social system which he thus expounded into his great political treatise, the "Leviathan," he incorporated all those minor inquiries, which we may read elsewhere also both in his English and in his Latin works.

His Ethical Theory, which resolves all our impulses regarding right and wrong into Self-love, does, however objectionable in itself, admit of being brought, by convenient accommodations, within no very great distance of the utilitarian theories of morals which have generally been the most popular in England. Unprejudiced readers will be more likely to agree in their estimate of the services he has rendered to other branches of mental philosophy. Always tending, if not more than tending, towards that metaphysical school which derives all human knowledge

from without, and which issues in making reason and conscience alike subject to the senses, he is yet, for those who can use his hints aright, one of the most instructive of teachers in Psychology. What he has written on the Association of Ideas, is among the most valuable contributions that have ever been rendered to this branch of science; nor are there anywhere wanting masterly pieces of analysis. He has also used his skill of reflective dissection, with great effect, in his treatise on Logic. The patient accuracy with which he observed mental phenomena, seldom led astray, unless when he was mastered by some favourite and deep-rooted idea, has justly been commended by the celebrated critic whose opinion of his language will immediately be quoted; and who is not indisposed to claim for Hobbes the honour, assigned by Dugald Stewart to Descartes, of having been the father of Experimental Psychology.

In his reasoning, Hobbes is admirably close and consistent. If we grant his premises, it is hardly ever possible to question his conclusions: and it is always easy, if attention be given, to trace every step by which the process of inference is carried on. In style, he has all the excellence which is compatible with a profound sluggishness of imagination, and a total want of emotive power. It has justly been said to be the perfection of mere didactic language. In the history of our literature, too, he deserves commemoration as one of the earliest of those writers who were distinguished, negatively, by the general absence of great faults in style. "Hobbes is perhaps the first of whom we can say that he is a good English writer. For the excellent passages of Hooker, Sidney, Raleigh, Bacon, Taylor, Chillingworth, and others of the Elizabethan or the first Stuart period, are not sufficient to establish their claim; a good writer being one whose composition is nearly uniform, and who never sinks to such inferiority or negligence as we must confess in most of these. Hobbes is clear, precise, spirited, and, above all, free in general from the faults of his predecessors his language is sensibly less obsolete he is never vulgar, rarely, if ever, quaint or pedantic."*

HISTORICAL WRITERS.

We have dwelt long in the company of our Old Divines, men who not only were the most eloquent prose writers of their time, but influenced their contemporaries more powerfully than any generation has since been influenced by theology, whether from

* Hallam: Literature of Europe.

the press or from the pulpit. Nor have we been able to part very speedily from those two celebrated philosophers, who, living in a great age, communicated, for good or for evil, a strong impulse to the race that succeeded. Other departments in the Prose Literature of the period, though all were thickly filled, and several of them richly adorned, must be passed over with a haste which it is difficult not to be sorry for.

Speculations on the Theory of Society and Civil Polity were frequent throughout the whole of our period. First may be named the Latin work, or rather works, "On the State," by William Bellenden, a Scotsman, which have been restored to notice in modern times by Parr's famous Whig preface: Ideas on social relations were thrown into the shape of an English romance by Lord Bacon in his "New Atlantis;" and Harrington, in his Oceana," delineated an aristocratic republic in the same manThe "Leviathan" of Hobbes may close this series.

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ner.

In the collection of materials for national history, the period was exceedingly active. Camden and Selden stand at the head of our band of Antiquaries; and along with them may be named Spelman, Cotton, and Speed. Under this head also might be classed Archbishop Usher's valuable contributions to the Ecclesiastical Antiquities and History of the country.

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Camden himself was an historian. So were several others whose names we encounter elsewhere: such as Bacon, whose History of Henry the Seventh" is in no way very remarkable; the poets Daniel and Drummond; and the many-sided Hobbes, who wrote in his old age "Behemoth, or a History of the Civil Wars." Knolles's "Turkish History" has been pronounced, by some of our best critics, to be one of the most animated narra

tives which the language possesses. A little before its appearance, a "History of the World," from the Creation to the middle of the republican period of Rome, was composed in the Tower of London, by a man lying there under sentence of death. The case is parallel to the production of the great work of Boethius; and the name of the writer is better known in England. He was b. 1552. Sir Walter Raleigh: and the work, while it displays so d. 1618. much learning as to have excited a suspicion probably ungrounded, is, in its fine and poetic eloquence, and its solemn thoughtfulness, at once worthy of the chivalrous author and touchingly suggestive of the circumstances in which he stood. Though it is full of discussions, these are both striking and instructive the narrative is often uncommonly spirited; and its tone of sadly devout sentiment justifies the honour that was paid

to it by Bishop Hall, in citing it as a signal instance of the blessed uses of adversity.*

Towards the close of the period, while Lord Clarendon was collecting the materials for his famous royalist history, Thomas May was writing, in the opposite interest, the "History of the Parliament." His work is less polished or eloquent than his poetical tastes might have led us to expect. Then, likewise, amidst more exciting and angry labours, John Milton recorded the early traditions of our country in his "History of England." To real historical value no claim could be made by a work, treating the Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods with the means then accessible. But there reigns through it a spirit of discriminating acuteness, uniting not inharmoniously with the animated pleasure inspired in the poet's mind by the heroic adventures he contemplates.

But, in no instance throughout that disturbed time, would those, who should look no further than the literary results of b. 1608. intellect, find such reason as in the case of Milton, for lad. 1674. menting the absorption of extraordinary power in controversies between sects and parties. Some of us indeed will believe that the "Defence of the People of England," against the scurrility of an alien hireling, was, notwithstanding the heavy misdoings of the nation or its chiefs, a duty in the performance of which the highest genius and learning might be not unworthily employed. Others may rejoice, on similar grounds, in the strenuous toil with which the poet laboured in attacks on the hierarchy.

*SIR WALTER RALEIGH,

From "The History of the World," published in 1614.

History hath triumphed over Time, which, besides it, nothing but Eternity hath triumphed over; for it hath carried our knowledge over the vast and devouring space for so many thousand years, and given to our mind such fair and piercing eyes, that we plainly behold living now, as if we had lived then, that great world, Magni Dei sapiens opus, the wise work, says Hermes, of a Great God, as it was then when but new in itself. By it it is, I say, that we live in the very time when it was created. We behold how it was governed; how it was covered with waters and again repeopled; how kings and kingdoms have flourished and fallen; and for what virtue and piety God made prosperous, and for what vice and deformity he made wretched, both the one and the other. it is not the least debt which we owe unto history, that it hath made us acquainted with our dead ancestors, and out of the depth and darkness of the earth delivered us their memory and fame. In a word, we may gather out of history a policy no less wise than eternal, by the comparison and application of other men's forepast miseries with our own like errors and ill-deservings,

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And