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BUT many leave the labour of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not fend them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prefcribed to themfelves fuch a degree of exactnefs as human diligence fcarcely can attain. Lloyd, fays Burnet, did not lay out his learning with the fame diligence as he laid it in. He was always hefitating and enquiring, raising objections and removing them, and waiting for clearer light and fuller difcovery. Baker, after many years paft in Biography, left his manuscripts to be buried in a library, because that was imperfect which could never be perfected.

Of thefe learned men, let those who aspire to the fame praise, imitate the diligence and avoid the scrupulofity. Let it be always remembered that life is fhort, that knowledge is endless, and that many doubts deserve not to be cleared. Let thofe whom nature and study have qualified to teach mankind, tell us what they have learned while they are yet able to tell it, and truft their reputation only to themfelves.

VOL. II.

E

N8 66.

N° 66. Saturday, July 21.

O complaint is more frequently repeated

No

among the learned, than that of the wafte made by time among the labours of Antiquity. Of those who once filled the civilized world with their renown, nothing is now left but their names, which are left only to raise defires that never can be fatisfied, and forrow which never can be comforted.

HAD all the writings of the ancients been faithfully delivered down from age to age, had the Alexandrian library been spared, and the Palatine repofitories remained unimpaired, how much might we have known of which we are now doomed to be ignorant; how many laborious enquiries, and dark conjectures, how many collations of broken hints and mutilated paffages might have been spared. We should have known the Succeffions of Princes, the Revolutions of Empire, the Actions of the Great, and

Opinions

Opinions of the Wife, the Laws and Conftitutions of every State, and the Arts by which public Grandeur and Happiness are acquired and preferved. We should have traced the progress of Life, feen Colonies from diftant regions take poffeffion of European deferts, and troops of Savages fettled into Communities by the defire of keeping what they had acquired; we should have traced the gradations of civility, and travelled upward to the original of things by the light of Hiftory, till in remoter times it had glimmered in fable, and at last sunk into darkness.

If the works of imagination had been less diminished, it is likely that all future times might have been fupplied with inexhaustible amusement by the fictions of Antiquity. The Tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides would have fhewn all the ftronger paffions in all their diverfities, and the Comedies of Menander would have furnished all the maxims of domestic life. Nothing would have been neceffary to moral wisdom but to have studied these great Mafters, whofe knowledge would have guided doubt, and whose authority would have filenced cavils,

8

SUCH

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SUCH are the thoughts that rife in every Student, when his curiofity is eluded, and his fearches are fruftrated; yet it may perhaps be doubted, whether our complaints are not fometimes inconfiderate, and whether we do not imagine more evil than we feel. Of the Ancients, enough remains to excite our emulation, and direct our endeavours. Many of the works which time has left us, we know to have been those that were moft efteemed, and which Antiquity itself confidered as Models; fo that having the Originals, we may without much regret lose the imitations. The obfcurity which the want of contemporary writers often produces, only darkens fingle paffages, and those commonly of flight importance. The general tendency of every piece may be known, and tho' that diligence deserves praise which leaves nothing unexamined, yet its miscarriages are not much to be lamented; for the most useful truths are always univerfal, and unconnected with accidents and cuftoms.

SUCH is the general confpiracy of human nature against contemporary merit, that if we had inherited from Antiquity enough to afford employment for the laborious, and amusement

for the idle, I know not what room would have been left for modern genius ar modern industry; almost every fubject would have been preoccupied, and every ftyle would have been fixed by a precedent from which few would have ventured to depart. Every writer would have had a rival, whofe fuperiority was already acknowledged, and to whofe fame his work would, even before it was feen, be marked out for a facrifice.

WE fee how little the united experience of mankind have been able to add to the heroic characters difplayed by Homer, and how few incidents the fertile imagination of modern Italy has yet produced, which may not be found in the Iliad and Odyssey. It is likely, that if all the works of the Athenian Philofophers had been extant, Malbranche and Locke would have been condemned to be filent readers of the ancient Metaphyficians; and it is apparent, that if the old writers had all remained, the Idler could not have writen a difquifition on the lofs.

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